When I got near the door, I released them both along with the breath I’d been holding. And damn if the pain lighting up my world didn’t choose that moment to explode across the surface of my skin. I ignored it. If I didn’t, there would be so much more to follow. Instead, I grabbed my jeans off the floor and keys off the nightstand and darted out the door.
By the time I made it to Finn’s, I had finally stopped shaking. I turned the ignition off and sat in the
Bronco, staring up at his crappy little garage apartment. One window glowed with light despite it being two in the morning.
“Please don’t let Emma be in there.” I climbed out of the truck.
Wind parted the darkness and every time a gust of it touched me, I flinched. Where the hell was
Noah the freaking shadow whisperer? For someone who claimed to want to be my friend, he wasn’t very concerned with me becoming a meal. I couldn’t get Anaya’s words out of my head. She said she’d seen it. Shadow walkers delivering souls to the underworld. Straight into the hands of the things
I was running from. Is that what Noah was doing with the souls he saved? I didn’t want to believe that.
He had to be different.
Please don’t let them follow me. Please.
I looked up at the stars peeking through the wispy gray clouds in the sky and prayed that whoever it was that Anaya worked for up there heard me. I pounded up the steps to Finn’s apartment and pounded even harder on the door. It took him a minute, but when he answered he didn’t look surprised. He just looked…tired.
“Can I stay here?” I asked. “I would have gone to Emma’s, but I don’t want to lead these things over there. And…I don’t really know where else to go.”
He looked me up and down and stepped to the side for me to enter.
“Are they here now?” he asked once I was inside. I shivered and rubbed my arms.
“Not yet.”
“You’re going to have to get your emotions under control if you want to keep them at bay.” He closed the door and locked it.
“Easier said than done.”
Finn flipped on a small table lamp.
“They thrive on the emotions you’re putting out,” he said. “Fear. Anger. Depression. It attracts them like moths to a flame. That’s how they always got to reaps before we could. They could smell the dying before I ever got the call.”
“Well, I must smell like a freaking buffet then.”
Finn laughed at that.
I shoved my hands in my pockets and looked around the pint-size apartment. A burgundy sofa that had survived some kind of garage sale hell and a dinged-up coffee table sat in the middle of the living room. Two mismatched bar stools were pushed up against the little kitchen bar. But it was neat and clean. The only things out of place were Finn’s black-and-white Converse tennis shoes he’d kicked off on the way to the bedroom.
“It’s a rat hole. I know.” He plopped down onto the sofa and ran a hand over the cushion. “I’m saving up to get something better after graduation.”
“Hey, looks fine to me.” I sat down beside him and checked the room one more time. At least he was going to make it to graduation. “It can’t be easy starting from scratch.”
He laughed and leaned his head back. “You have no idea. It all just sounds like a fairy tale at first.
But nobody tells you what happens after ‘they lived happily ever after.’”
“Do you regret it?” I studied his face, trying to see what Emma loved so much. “Do you wish things had just stayed the same? I mean, it’s got to be easier being dead than all this.”
Part of me really believed that. Life didn’t seem very easy any more. Not that it ever really had. But when you started blurring the lines between life and death, things got…complicated. I was never very good with complicated.
“No.” Finn shook his head. “And trust me. The way things were before, being separated from her like that…I’ll take this and more any day of the week.”
I leaned up and placed my palms on the coffee table to try to stop shaking. “Well, she loves you,” I said, shivering. “I’ve never seen her love anyone the way she loves you.”
Finn smiled at that. He grabbed a blanket from the back of the couch and tossed it over to me. I wrapped it around myself to try to lock in what little heat I had left.
“What about Anaya?” he said. “Don’t tell me there’s not something there. I’ve seen the way she looks at you. I’ve known Anaya for a very long time. She makes a point not to look at anyone like that.”
I shook my head and stared at the carpet. “She doesn’t love me. She thinks I’m somebody else. And to be honest I don’t think I have the energy to be some guy she’s been chasing for a thousand years.”
“Wait…somebody else?” Finn sat up with interest. “Do you mean she knew you in a past life?”
I buried my face in my hands and groaned at how ridiculous and impossible all this shit sounded.
“You know how you pointed out I must have lived lots of lives to get to where I am now?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, apparently one of those lives was Tarik,” I said. “As in Anaya’s fiancé.”
Shock showed on every inch of Finn’s face. He rubbed his chin and stared at the carpet. “Maybe she’s wrong.”
“She showed me, Finn.” I rubbed my palms together and pain throbbed under the tender red skin. “I saw her through his eyes. I felt her. He loved her. And now I don’t even know what to think. Am I him? I don’t feel like I am. I still feel like Cash, with all of my own fucked-up feelings tearing me up inside.”
Finn pinned me with his tired gaze. “Do you love her?”
“How am I supposed to answer that when I don’t even know who she’s really seeing when she looks at me now?”
“That doesn’t have anything to do with it.” He laughed. “You either love her or you don’t.”
“ I…I don’t know how I feel.” I swallowed the lie easily enough. The fact was, I knew exactly how I felt about Anaya. I knew because I’d never felt that way about anyone before. And it scared the hell out me. It scared me because there wasn’t anywhere for this to go. She was dead. I was dying. The whole thing was so screwed up it made my head hurt. I wondered if this was how Emma felt when she started to fall for Finn.
Finn laughed softly. “Yeah. Whatever you say.”
When I looked up, his eyelids looked heavy. He shook his head to keep himself awake.
“Why aren’t you sleeping?” I asked.
Finn sat up and rubbed his face with his palms, then pushed his fingers through his hair. “I’m entertaining you, remember?”
“You’re weren’t sleeping when I showed up.” I nodded to the bedroom light on. “Don’t blame it on me.”
Finn shook his head and sighed. “I…I have dreams. Nightmares.”
“About what?”
“You can’t unsee the things I’ve seen,” he said. “You touch enough death and it’s bound to come back to haunt you.”
He sounded far away in that moment, even though he was sitting right next to me.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
He looked surprised. “For what?”
“For being a dick.” I leaned back into the lumpy couch cushion. “You didn’t deserve that. If I’m being honest, I’m grateful Emma has you. You changed her back into a girl I’ve missed for a long time.”